A “heartless and cruel” carer who was caught on camera abusing an 81-year-old woman with dementia has been jailed.
In footage shared online, carer Louise Harris could be seen screaming at Elizabeth Anne Shipton in her home in Pontardawe, Neath Port Talbot, and drunkenly shouting: “I hope you die in your sleep you… horrible cow.”
As Elizabeth lay in bed, Harris knelt down and put her arm on her chest, demanding to know where her money was.
Elizabeth complained the arm was hurting her, but the carer yelled: “I don’t care, where’s your money?”
Harris, 42, was given a three-month sentence at Swansea Crown Court – but the victim’s family believes it should have been a significantly longer sentence.
Shipton’s daughter Tracy Faram Shipton said her mother was “horrifically traumatised” and had filed an appeal, arguing the sentence handed to Harris last week was unduly lenient.
She had known Harris, a former neighbour, for many years and had trusted her with her mum’s care.
“She’d been a carer since she was 18. I checked everything with her – she was trained on dementia, manual handling, incontinence. I’ll never get my head around how she could do this,” she said.
Tracy said Harris had known her mother had been in a fragile state, having recently been in Morriston hospital for seven weeks with sepsis. She was also grieving the death of her husband, whom she had been with since the age of 16.
“My mother had come out of hospital in December, my dad’s funeral was in January, and then this happened in February. Louise knew everything my mother was going through,” she said.
Tracy said that Harris was on her first trial shift, after the family had advertised on Facebook for someone to help while they had waited for a care package to be put in place by social services.
Tracy said Harris had been meant to stay for four hours in total.
“I was there for the first hour and Louise seemed amazing. Almost as soon as I left she turned,” she said.
She said that, after she had left, Harris “got drunk and ripped up my mother’s knitting”.
“I’d explained to her that knitting was the only thing helping my mother through the grief, it was giving her something to live for… It was just cruel.”
Harris found a bottle of vodka in the fridge and downed it. The court heard she was a recovering alcoholic who had “succumbed to temptation”.
Harris’s rage appeared to be sparked by Shipton’s accidentally pressing her emergency alarm, which triggered a phone call to a crisis response helpline.
Tracy said this had happened often and the helpline operator quickly ended the call after Harris said everything had been fine.
The court heard how, at one point, Harris went into the kitchen and waved a large kitchen knife around while trashing the property.
Tracy said she had been horrified when she had accessed the security system’s camera to check how things were going, and had witnessed Harris abusing her mum.
“The police had to break the door down,” she said.
Abul Hussain, prosecuting, said the victim had lain helpless in her bed thinking she was going to die.
Harris had been “slumped on the floor” when police had entered the property, he said.
Harris pleaded guilty to being a care worker who ill-treated the victim and to criminal damage.
She had originally been charged with attempted robbery because of her demands about Shipton’s money, but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped that charge.
Tracy said it “beggars belief that they couldn’t see any physical assault there”.
Andrew Evans, representing Harris, said his client was genuinely remorseful for her “wholly unacceptable behaviour”, which he said was the result of her finding the vodka in the fridge.
Judge Rees imposed a three-month jail term, of which 40% will be served in custody.
Tracy added: “The judge’s hands were tied by the sentencing guidelines. You could see he was raging.
“For her to be serving just over a month is unbelievable… We’ve been living this day in, day out, with my mother getting worse.”
She said her mum “can’t be left on her own at all now”.
“She keeps thinking Louise is going to come back, and she has such vivid flashbacks that she’s been put on sedatives.
“The effect is my mum will not wear the lifeline device because she thinks if she presses it the same thing will happen. We’ve had to fit a new front door with glass in the middle so she can see if someone is on the other side.”
She said that she wanted all homes where carers attend to be fitted with cameras, “because what if we didn’t have this camera?”
Rees said elderly people were entitled to be treated with “respect, dignity and humanity” but the defendant had been “heartless and cruel”, showing a “callous disregard” for her welfare.
